


Trending

by KatyaMorrigan



Category: Loveless - Alice Oseman
Genre: Best Friends, College, F/F, Gen, Multi, Other, Pip quite likes it, Rooney tries e-girl life, TikTok, does this count as a crack fic if i'm not entirely joking, student life, the internet is weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27802108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatyaMorrigan/pseuds/KatyaMorrigan
Summary: Rooney decides she wants to try being a TikTok star, but unfortunately for the others, she's interested in pursuing the "student life" angle in their shared house. A certain item becomes the unwanted focus of a viral video, and it raises a lot of questions about whether Rooney's antics are worth the trouble they cause.
Relationships: Pip Quintana/Rooney Bach
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Trending

**Author's Note:**

> Day 30 of my NaNoWriMo writing challenge this year - one oneshot a day, every day for the whole of November. I'm following the SOFTober 2020 prompts by @wafflesandkruge on Instagram to give me some fluffy starting points for the coming month of fics.  
> The prompt for today was "blanket".  
> I hope you enjoy!

Georgia had been living in her student house with her friends for more than a term now. They had returned to Durham after the Christmas holiday, back to their freezing cold house and a sour smell coming from the bin under the sink.

“Who was it who was in charge of the food waste?” Sunil groaned as they fished out the green bin, holding it at arm’s length all the way to the larger bins outside.

“Think that was me,” Jason mumbled, although his embarrassment was hidden by his grimace at the smell.

It took a lot of deodorant and room spray to make the kitchen bearable once more, but soon they were settled back into their homes. Jason and Georgia had made the journey from Kent together on the train, and Sunil had arrived a week early so that they could keep working on their final dissertation in the peace of an empty house. Pip and Rooney would be arriving that weekend, having spent the final days of the Christmas holidays at Rooney’s house.

Georgia made the most of the quiet that came from only living with the boys: Jason was out a lot of the time, being part of the rowing club and a volunteer for a few additional societies, and Sunil was so absorbed in their revision that Georgia was often the one to remind them to eat. As much as she missed having her college wife and college wife’s girlfriend around, she was certainly grateful for the days when she was the noisiest in the house simply by being the only one living in it. She camped out in the living room rather than her bedroom, took her time in the shower, and kept the cupboards stocked with the snacks that Rooney commonly stole. It was pretty nice.

Making a home out of such a communal building had been a strange experience. The rows of student houses in Durham all had their own quirks, but the main thing that they shared was, of course, that students lived there. Every one of those little homes had been built around the university’s population, and so they functioned purely for student life. Georgia sometimes thought about the other people who must have slept in the same bed she did now, putting their own sheets on the mattress, and who maybe moved the desk to the other side of the room. They would have looked out at the spectacular sunsets visible from the window, and been irritated by the wobbly foot of the desk chair and absence of a socket near the bed. The house was temporary accommodation for students, not built to be a home for life, and it was bizarre how attached Georgia had become in the four short months she had lived there.

Of course, there were more than a few “character qualities”, as Rooney would have put it, in their house. Because students lived there, the fridge still kept a residual smell of beer, and there was a barely filled crack in one of the kitchen wall tiles that constantly threatened to spit plaster into their cooking. A strange cupboard behind Sunil’s bed had revealed just the electrics panel, but also a time capsule that had been left by students in 2005.

And there was the décor.

“Things in our uni accommodation that just make sense,” Rooney had intoned as they went through the items left to them by the previous residents. “Throw cushions and blankets that only a mother could love.”

It was true. The throw cushions in the living room were twee at best, and nobody liked them. At best, they were turned to their least offensive side and kept on the sofa. At worst, they had been used as doorstops and draft excluders.

“Can we actually make one of those TikToks?” Rooney asked. “We might blow up.”

“Do you really think anyone cares about Edith enough?” Jason asked incredulously. “In-jokes just aren’t funny unless you get them.”

Edith was the blanket that Georgia had found underneath the sofa cushions. She stank vaguely of piss, and was made of an awful pink felt material that retained heat like anything. On the particularly cold days when Edith could finally receive some appreciation, she made anyone who sat under her sweat, and really brought out the urinary smell. She had been named as such because she looked like the kind of blanket a grandmother would have over her lap in a care home – and was an olfactory reminder of incontinence.

“Edith could get us trending,” Rooney insisted.

“We’re not cool enough to become TikTok famous,” Georgia said with a roll of her eyes.

“Sure we are! Look, we’re all incredibly queer and racially diverse, we cater to a mass market!”

Jason snorted at Rooney’s comment.

“As the only straight white person here, I think I can say that not being straight and white is not a selling point.”

“And yet you’re friends with us,” Pip said, throwing her arms around his neck and tackling him onto the sofa. Jason made a loud gagging sound at her weight around his throat and threw her back onto the ugly cushions, tickling her. She squealed like a toddler and kicked at his hands. Rooney rolled her eyes.

“Are we all going to be okay if I try to get TikTok famous using our status as broke students as a leverage point?” she asked.

“Knock yourself out,” Sunil said. “I’m here if you want to cash in on your gender-nonconforming brown gay ace friends for style points.”

“I like your thinking,” Rooney grinned, giving him finger guns as she went up to her room. Jason sighed.

“Look what you’ve done. Now she’s going to go and plot ways to make us internet stars.”

“You can’t say it wouldn’t be fun,” Sunil shrugged.

“It won’t be fun if we have to learn dances. I’m not doing that.”

“You know there’s more to TikTok than just twelve year-olds copying the Hype House, right?” Pip laughed.

“What’s the Hype House?” Jason asked, oblivious as Pip and Georgia giggled.

***

A week later and a huge influx of parcels started to arrive on their doorstep each morning. Georgia actually ended up putting a cardboard box in front of the letter slot to catch all the smaller packages so that they could be carried more efficiently to the various bedrooms. They mostly seemed to be addressed to one person though: Rooney Bach.

“Gotta develop an aesthetic to get noticed,” she grinned as Georgia handed another three DVD-shaped boxes to her.

“What exactly is the aesthetic you’re going for?”

“Lesbian.”

“…Got it.”

“Not cottagecore, only little bit vintage, but mostly just alt vibes here.”

Rooney cut open a box with the knife still covered in jam from her breakfast that lay on the desk, and pulled out a reel of neon strip lights.

“Oh, you’re going all in on this,” Georgia grimaced.

“Yep.” Rooney grinned. “I’m gonna need Jason to help me put these up.”

“Good luck getting him involved.”

“Reckon this will help?” Rooney asked, taking a black choker with chains dangling from it out of the second package. Georgia just snorted.

“You’re going to want to get Pip’s opinion of that.”

“She’s too short to help with redecorating. Now, what’s in here..? Oh!”

Rooney opened the final package and revealed a box of bleach and other hair dying tools.

“There’s nothing in our lease about destroying the bathroom sink, right?”

“I’m gonna let Pip deal with this one.”

***

“How is the great TikTok transformation going at the moment?” Sunil asked as Georgia came downstairs, wearing rubber gloves and feeling a little light-headed from the fumes.

“Well, Rooney has peeled the paint off the corner of her ceiling, left a bleach stain on the corner of the shower curtain, and I don’t think Pip is going to let her take off the choker ever again,” Georgia grimaced, binning the gloves.

“Hmm,” Sunil grinned, “Sounds like she’s having fun.”

“We’re never going to get our deposit back at this rate. She’s stuck the paint back on with a Prittstick.”

Sunil shook their head as they sipped at the mug of tea in their hands.

“Student finances know they’re dealing with students. All we have to do is not literally destroy anything and it will be okay.”

“You sure?”

“Trust me,” they said with a grin. “Rooney’s hair dye isn’t going to be the worst thing that bathroom has seen.”

***

Rooney continued to shift in her appearance as the weeks wore on. Her new blonde highlights finally faded into her natural hair colour slowly, and she perfected the notched eyeliner that she saw one bisexual icon wearing in a few TikToks. A split appeared in her eyebrow, and the sound of new audios could regularly be heard filtering from under her door as she learned the lines for each one.

Georgia was roped into a “who knows me better? Best friend vs girlfriend” video, which she immensely enjoyed the filming of even if she found the end result incredibly embarrassing. Pip was still very much enjoying Rooney’s alternative dress sense now, and had started wearing eyeliner hearts beside her eyes on days when she didn’t have lectures. The house generally remained the same except for a few occasions on which someone was pulled from revising or watching Netflix to hold Rooney’s phone for her, or when random household objects went missing for use as props.

The time came for the infamous “Things in our uni accommodation that just make sense” video, and Rooney called a house meeting to go over everything in their residence that was worthy of a place in the TikTok. Jason insisted it was a waste of time, but begrudgingly involved himself when Rooney suggested they include his spare rowing oar that leaned against the wall in the hallway. Everything was catalogued and turned into a list, which Rooney then reordered shot-for-shot and gave to Sunil.

“They have the steadiest hands,” she explained. “Sunil makes the best cameraman. Camera person.”

“Why do you ask me to do it most of the time, then?” Pip protested.

“Because you’re willing to do anything for Alternative Rooney,” she replied, kissing her girlfriend on the cheek.

Rooney took them on the tour of the house, making them start from the open door and leading to more complaints from Jason about the looks that the neighbours were giving them. Georgia would have put this down to his general distaste for TikTok, except that she caught the curtain of the house opposite twitch, and saw the occupants glaring out at them.

They filmed the hallway oar and the cracked kitchen tile, as well as the mysterious stain under the living room rug and the horrendous cushions and Edith (they counted as one package). Rooney took them upstairs and pointed out the secret doorway leading to the electrics and the biscuit tin time capsule that they kept in place for the next occupants to also discover. There were contrasting shots of the bedrooms – Rooney’s TikTok-infused dungeon, Pip’s normal corner of the same room, Georgia’s messy colourful affair, Sunil’s equally colourful but more minimalist room, and then Jason’s awkward end-on room that curved around the bathroom.

Finally, all the filming was done and everyone was allowed back into their rooms to continue living normally. Georgia sincerely hoped she hadn’t left underwear on the floor.

A few days later and Rooney had an important announcement to make.

“We’ve hit 100 views!” she exclaimed at breakfast.

“Doesn’t that mean almost nothing nowadays?” Sunil asked, but he was shushed instantly.

“It’s a start! A hundred in the first 72 hours isn’t at all bad for an account as small as mine.”

Another week, and Rooney was reporting that it had reaching 500 views. Then one thousand within that same week. When a better-known UK creator duetted her video, reacting to the things they listed in their house, it suddenly jumped into the tens of thousands. And with that sudden recognition came the mild concern.

“You didn’t film the front of our house, did you?” Georgia asked anxiously. Rooney shook her head.

“Sunil only filmed the door handle as they opened it to show me in the hallway,” she assured her.

“Did you say we’re in Durham?”

“I think I did? But we’re one of thousands of students here, and there’s student streets all around the town.”

One more day, and Rooney received a comment that she couldn’t ignore.

“Guys,” she said excitedly as they gathered for their one sit-down meal of the week. Pip had made paella for them. “You won’t believe the comment I got.”

“Are they accusing you of being straight again?”

“No. It’s even weirder.”

“Well, what is it?” Georgia took Rooney’s phone from her outstretched hand as Rooney spoke the comment aloud.

““I’ve sent you a DM, but I want to buy Edith from you.””

Georgia laughed. That was exactly what it said. She clicked on the profile and through to DMs: the person had sent a lengthy request about wanting to buy the disgusting old blanket, including a promise for a large sum of money if they were allowed to have her.

“That’s got to be some pervert wanting a blanket you’ve sat on,” Jason said, wrinkling his nose. Pip was just giggling, and Georgia was still checking the person’s account to glean more information. They had no profile picture, their likes were not public, and they were following only three accounts other than Rooney’s.

“Yeah, but a pervert who’s willing to pay to get rid of Edith.”

“You can’t be serious,” Jason said. “You’re actually considering this?”

“More than considering it,” Georgia chipped in. “She’s replied to them asking how much, and the weirdo is offering £250 for the blanket.”

There was a brief silent pause, followed by exclamations of “ew!” and generally confused noises.

“They think Edith is worth _two hundred and fifty pounds?”_ Sunil said, slowly and incredulously.

“Plus postage and packaging. They’ve even sent their PayPal so that Rooney can request the cash.”

“Unbelievable,” Pip grinned.

“Maybe it’s someone sentimental?” Georgia asked doubtfully. “Maybe they had a grandparent who used to have a blanket like that, or something.”

“Unfortunately, my money’s on it being a weird internet perv who wants a blanket from a teen home,” Sunil grimaced.

“My money’s on getting paid for getting rid of a gross blanket,” Rooney grinned. “Is there anything stopping us from doing it?”

“I’ll double-check what items are included in our deposit for the house,” Sunil offered, “but I’m pretty sure that because it was a gift from the previous residents, we’re allowed to do what we want with it.”

“I’ll share the money with everyone,” Rooney promised. “£250 divided by five is…?”

“Thank god you didn’t do a Maths degree,” Pip grinned.

***

One week after that, and not only had Edith the piss-smelling blanket disappeared from their home, the fuss around Rooney’s TikTok had died down. Consequently, Rooney had relaxed her efforts towards going viral on the app. The neon lights were no longer permanently flashing from under her door, and the excessive eyeliner was an occasional treat rather than a staple of her appearance. Rooney had split the money for the blanket between them all, and although Jason had initially protested about having “some pervert’s money”, it hadn’t taken much persuading for him to take the extra £50 in his PayPal.

“Can we please agree that if you decide to try being internet famous again, you don’t do it with strange belongings in our house?” he pleaded. “I don’t think I can take having more weirdos try to buy our things.”

“Yeah, I’m happy to say I’m over that trend now,” Rooney said. “I’ll just learn the dances and be an e-girl instead.”

Sunil suggested an ironic toast to Edith, the sixth resident of the house, and everyone grinned as they raised their glasses.

“To Edith,” intoned Georgia. “Never was there a blanket more disgusting or more deserving of an online perv’s attention.”

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that was weird and slightly directionless, but I hope it was fun to read nonetheless. I needed to immerse myself in some strange student antics just for the excuse to play with these characters again, and the thought of Rooney getting a bizarre DM from a viral TikTok was what immediately came to mind. I'm not even sorry.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, as this is my last fic for the month! Thank you for the engagement on my more niche writing such as for Loveless, and I wish you the best.


End file.
